BE A BRAVEHEART: Think of the worst that can happen to you

Back when I was new at reporting, I would lie awake all night before a big article of mine was to appear. In the darkness and the silence, I would become certain that I had gotten it wrong. It was just a short mental hop from there to being sued and losing my job and becoming homeless.

That fear faded with time. As the routine of writing and being read became more familiar, my nervousness turned in other directions. My first magazine article actually resulted in an ulcer. My first few speeches led to my first migraine medication. And because you might be eating breakfast while you read this, I won’t begin to tell you about the debut of this column and my bouts of intestinal cramps.

I’ve been awake in the middle of the night a lot again lately, because a few weeks ago, I started down an unfamiliar road. XM Satellite Radio has invited me to be host of my own weekly programme, all about life and work, expanding on the conversation begun here. When I do sleep, I dream ? about losing my voice or speaking in strange tongues, or of rows and rows of radios broadcasting my words out to no one.

Despite a long history of bad nerves, I somehow did not expect this latest bout. Until I actually took the microphone for the first time, I didn’t think I would be rattled. After all, I’m covering a subject matter I have come to know well. I have been a radio guest often enough that I am comfortable with the medium. And while the wires and buttons are a little intimidating, they are not my responsibility ? the producers and engineers take care of that.

All I have to do is talk, something friends and family will tell you I usually have no problem doing.

And yet, there is fear, slightly different from before, but there. This is not the fear of the brand new or the unknown; it is the fear of the awkward. It’s the same fear that keeps me from learning to drive a stick shift. I already know how to drive, my logic goes, and no good can come from transforming back into a beginner.

And yet, shouldn’t we all do that often? Take what we think we know and come at it from a different angle? Remember what it feels like not to be secure ? and in a rut?

I don’t mean paralysing fear. Even at my most sleepless and nervous, I have never felt in danger or out of control, as some people do at work.

They fear retribution from bosses, or belittlement, or feel in jeopardy from unsafe environments. They are phobic about public speaking or plane travel.

Instead, what I am suggesting is fear that can be used as an internal motivator. Doing something new, even though life would be perfectly comfortable and calm if you didn’t. Doing something new, not in spite of the fact that it scares you, but because of it. My high school debate coach used to warn that if you weren’t nervous you’d lost your edge. Curl your toes when you’re scared, she advised, direct the energy downward.

Using fear this way takes practice, says Amy Frankel, a founder of the TAG Creative advertising agency, who used to fear making cold sales calls. “A much younger person,” said Frankel, who just turned 50, is “afraid of rejection, abandonment, disapproval. Like you’re going to get called into the principal’s office and he’s going to phone your parents.”

Now she is trying to teach fearlessness to her 18-year-old son. “What’s the worst that can happen?” she asks. “And so what if it did? Then what else would happen? And so on ... until there are no more fears left.”

So, all I have to do is think about the radio programme, right?